The vessel gradually diminished upon the horizon, and darkness was about to cover the heavens, when Lusignan ordered a quantity of wood to be brought upon the terrace, to form a beacon fire, which was instantly ignited, in order that Paul, whose vessel was nearly enshrouded in the darkness, might continue to fix his eyes upon that spot until he had doubled Cape Trois Pointes. Lusignan and Marguerite had for an hour lost sight of the ship, while Paul, thanks to their large brilliant fire, might still perceive them, when a bright flame, like to a flash of lightning, appeared on the horizon, and in a few seconds the report of a gun, similar to the prolonged sound of distant thunder, reached their ears, and all again was silent. Lusignan and Marguerite had received Paul’s last farewell. And now, although the domestic drama which we had undertook to relate, has, in fact, terminated here, some of our readers may, perhaps, have felt sufficient interest in the young adventurer, of whom we have made the hero of this story, to follow him in the second part of his career; to these then, after thanking them for the kind attention they have been pleased to grant to us, we are about to recount truly and plainly, facts which a most minute research have enabled us to lay before them. At the period we have reached, that is to say, in the month of May, 1784, the whole of Europe had fallen into that state of torpor, which unthinking men imagined to be tranquillity, but which minds more profound, regarded as the dull and momentary calm that precedes the tempest. America, by obtaining her independence, had prepared France for her revolution. Kings and people, mistrustful of each other, were upon their guard. Peter III., who had become odious to the Russians, in consequence of his ignoble character, the narrowness of his political views, and above all, for his excessive leaning to Prussian manners, and Prussian discipline, had been deposed without opposition, and strangled without a struggle. Catherine had thus found herself, at the age of thirty-two, mistress of an empire which extended over one-seventh part of the globe; her first care was to compel the neighbouring powers to accept her as a mediatrix in their quarrel, and thus become do-pendent upon her. Thus, had she obliged the people of Courland to drive from them their new Duke, Charles of Saxony, and to recall Biren; she had sent her ambassadors and her armies to Warsaw, there to have crowned by the name of Stanislaus Augustus, her former lover, Poniatowski; she had formed an alliance with England; she had associated to her policy the Courts of Vienna and Berlin; and notwithstanding all these great projects of foreign policy, she had not neglected the internal government of her own country, and in the interval of her amours, so fickle and so various, she still found time to reward industry, to encourage agriculture, to reform the laws, to raise a navy, to